FAVORITE THINGS

06.03.12

Oprah’s Book Club By the Numbers

The Daily Beast rounds up the numbers on the endorsement that helped bring literature to the masses.

A year after Oprah Winfrey closed the book on her legendary book club, the most successful talk show host in history is back with “Oprah’s Book Club 2.0." In an online video announcement last week, the OWN founder said that this new iteration of her once career-making club will be “way different from the old book club.” She’s embracing pixels as well as pages, promising that “this time, it’s an interactive, online club for our digital world.”

Oprah is launching the new club with Wild, a memoir published in March that recounts author Cheryl Strayed’s 1,100-mile hike through California and Washington State.

While it remains to be seen whether the new club will enjoy the same market power her original did before floundering in 2011, The Daily Beast looks back at the clout O’s endorsement once wielded.

1 – Author disinvited to Oprah’s show after dissing her book-club choice. Jonathan Franzen earned this distinction after his novelThe Corrections was selected for the club, and Franzen said he was a tad discomfited by putting “that logo of corporate ownership” on his work.

2 – Dickens's novels, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities, selected by Oprah’s book club in December of 2010. The talk-show host said that she hadn’t read any of Dickens’s work before selecting the classics.

3 – Books by Bill Cosby selected by Oprah in one year.

3 – Novels by Southern master William Faulkner selected by Oprah in 2005.